Sacrificing Character So We Can Keep Fighting

It will take decades to understand the impact our 24/7 bingeing
on polarized thinking and talking is having on us. In the past few
weeks, however, we can see at least one outcome – our institutions are
losing the ability to tolerate someone who tries to change the subject
from our right-left, conservative-liberal, red-blue noxious
conversation. This is particularly true for people possessing the kind
of character that has been shaped by religious values, worldviews, and
ideas.

Consider two examples from the month of April: former FBI Director
James Comey, who is a strong United Methodist, and soon-to-become former
chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives, Patrick J. Conroy, SJ, a
Catholic priest and Jesuit. Both men got slammed in April because they
tried to talk outside the lanes of our narrow binary conversations.

In the first case, Comey is trying to jump-start a national conversation on leadership and values. But, his new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,
has unleashed instead an unprecedented torrent of criticism from nearly
everyone, especially Democrats, Republicans and journalists. Of course,
lots of people do not like Comey, and many claim he is driven by his
own self-righteousness and self-interest. But, is that really true? Or,
is this a person of character who is trying to change the subject of our
relentless divisiveness?

On Sunday evening, April 22, a crowd of more than 700 people at
Seattle University had the benefit of spending nearly an hour and a half
with James Comey. Many of the people were expecting an angry man,
filled with animus against Donald Trump. Instead, they encountered a
warm, humorous, serious, and thoughtful person who was humble enough to
question his own decisions and the motivations behind them.

Journalists (and many politicians) are misrepresenting,
misinterpreting and misunderstanding Comey’s book because they are
reading it through the lens of our polarization bingeing, and they are
trying to force it into the wrong literary genre – the political memoir.
The key to identifying the right genre for A Higher Loyalty is
found in the first few pages, in which the author explains the
experiences and role models that formed his understanding of a good
leader and his reference to the famous Protestant theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr. If you want to understand why Comey prosecuted Martha Stewart,
released the Clinton emails, and made announcements so close to a
presidential election – read Niebuhr who provided the former FBI
director with a complicated, nuanced and infinitely realistic
religious/philosophical orientation to leadership and life.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a German Evangelical minister who took his first
pastorate in a Detroit parish comprised mostly of workers at the Ford
Motor Co. At the time, the world lionized Henry Ford as an industrialist
who built a profitable business, while simultaneously increasing the
social and economic welfare of his workers. Niebuhr knew differently.
His congregants often struggled financially and became pawns in a pretty
elaborate public relations campaign for Ford automobiles. Getting
involved in working to improve worker conditions, the young Detroit
pastor began wrestling with the fundamental nature of evil and good. He
later moved to Union Seminary in New York as a professor, and became a
public intellectual for the nation and world, promoting a Christian
social ethic (often called Christian Realism) that eliminates,
as Charles Lemert puts it, the “pious swagger” normally associated with
people of faith seeking to influence politics and society. Reinhold
Niebuhr knew that a democracy had to balance rights and freedoms with
social and economic justice, and he developed a rigorous intellectual
position located between opposites. He also believed that pride was the
most dangerous vice for an individual and constituted the most
destructive social sin of an institution. In the political arena, the
sin of pride leads to a nationalism that can easily become idolatry.

James Comey did his honors thesis in religion at the College of
William and Mary comparing Niebuhr’s thought and another American public
theologian, Jerry Falwell, founder of the so-called Evangelical social
movement known as the Moral Majority. Comey concluded in his 1982 senior
paper that Falwell’s religiously-motivated political action was
susceptible to the very prideful national delusion about which Niebuhr
warned. If you know Niebuhr’s thought, A Higher Loyalty looks very different than the way most people are discussing it.

Comey does have some less than generous observations about key
political leaders. But, in good Niebuhr fashion, the former FBI chief’s
harshest judgments are reserved for himself. He admits to cowardice,
indecision, grandstanding, mixed motivations, and miscalculations about
outcomes from his behavior. More significantly for a student of Niebuhr,
Comey admits to a pridefulness that he has tried to keep under check
his entire adult life, often times with the snarky help of his wife. An
ethical leader for Comey is someone who is always self-aware and a
master of balance – kindness and toughness, confidence and humility,
seriousness and humor, political astuteness and a fierce commitment to
apolitical decision-making. The book is ultimately about trying to learn
how to keep opposites in balance in a political era in which everything
is imbalanced.

A second person to pay a price for trying to change the subject in
our polarization is the current chaplain for the U.S. House of
Representatives, Rev. Patrick J. Conroy, SJ. House Speaker Paul Ryan
forced Conroy, who has served in the role since 2011, to resign several
months before the priest’s term expired. There have been suggestions
that Ryan, a Catholic, sought the ouster of the priest, in part, because
of a prayer the Jesuit gave during the tax reform bill debates in the
fall of 2017. The prayer asked God to give Congressional leaders the
wisdom needed to write a bill helping everyone, not just a few. The
actual prayer, which was delivered in the capitol on November 6, 2017,
included these words:

“May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not
winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared
by all Americans.”

Ryan later criticized Conroy, telling him the prayer was “too political.”

It is too early to understand the full story around Fr. Pat Conroy’s
resignation, but it is likely the news media and politicians will get
his story wrong, too. The secret to making sense of Patrick Conroy
requires an appreciation for the Catholic social justice tradition, the
Second Vatican Council, and a change in missional direction within the
Society of Jesus during the 1970s, when the Jesuits decided that
religious faith must promote justice in society or it is null, void and
inauthentic.

Conroy, like Comey, does not see the world in binaries. He believes
that authentic faith must promote justice, and we need to learn how to
make complex ethical decisions in a world more gray than black and
white. Because of this, many would like Conroy silenced.

Because Comey and Conroy are people of character does not mean they
are wiser than others, or that they never make wrong decisions. It also
does not assure their action is free from the influence of ego or
self-interest. It does mean, however, that they have the habitus of mind
and heart to question and challenge the pack-mentality of our polarized
times. It does mean that they try to follow the good, even when it is
inconvenient, and are willing to risk their own reputations in the
process.

Comey and Conroy are flawed humans like everyone else. But, they are
also men of character and breadth of vision in a narrow time of
cancerous polarization. They hold up a mirror to our behavior that we
want to avoid at all cost. As long as we are not forced to look into the
reflection of the higher values of the human condition, we can keep
fighting without fear that someone will prick our conscience.

Update: May 3, 2018

In another example of the complexity of the relationship between
religion and culture, faith and politics, the Speaker of the House, Paul
Ryan, has decided to rethink his decision to enforce the resignation on
Father Patrick Conroy, SJ.